Trial By Fire (5 page)

From the lounge, Colonel Guajardo watched with detached interest as the presidential party and the attending cluster of lackeys and functionaries moved to the terminal door behind a screen of security men. He was not really interested in the president’s party. Instead, he watched the crew of the fuel truck go about their task under the scrutiny of the security personnel. The Air Force lieutenant who had informed him that the president’s plane was inbound was nowhere to be seen. The colonel, however, had no doubt that everything was in hand. With nothing more to do, he turned away from the window and left the lounge for the conference room to listen to the discussions that would last well into the night.

The flight back to Mexico City was quiet. President Montalvo had started to work on a speech he was scheduled to give to the Chamber of Deputies in two days, but he was unable to concentrate. The secretary of finance, the secretary of national defense, the secretary of programming and budget, and the comptroller general, all of whom had accompanied the president on this trip for the express purpose of working on the speech, were already asleep, as was almost everyone else. Even the ever-watchful chief of his security detachment, seated in the aisle seat of the last row of the cabin, was nodding between consciousness and sleep. It seemed that President Montalvo alone, though tired, could not sleep. His mind was a tumble of thoughts and feelings, most of them negative.

His most recurring thought was that he might fail to solve Mexico’s problems. The discussions with the governor of Tamaulipas had only served to further befuddle his grsp of the scope and nature of problems facing his administration. Because of this inability to achieve a clear and precise focus, instead of being the savior of his nation, the Revolution, and its people, he now was being portrayed as a Quemando, someone too naive to be trusted. In six months Montalvo had been unable to hack through the bureaucracy that fed on corruption at every level and protected itself from within.

Seeing no changes, the people heeded the call for civil disobedience and strikes, actions that Montalvo saw as a direct challenge to his authority.

Though he instinctively knew it was wrong, Montalvo had, at the urging of his advisors, resorted to harsh repression and the selected suspension of civil liberties. The left seemed to be employing anything and everything to alienate him and his party from the people. Unless something could be done to stop the current trend, he would have no choice but to employ those means of restoring stability to the government and the nation that could also bring about its eventual downfall.

Though his eyes demanded he close them, President Montalvo cleared his head as he shuffled through the papers on his worktable. Forcing himself to concentrate, he carefully underlined selected passages of the speech he would use in an interview with an American journalist that had been arranged for later that morning. The curtailment of his vacation and early return to Mexico City was, in his opinion, an opportunity. By leaking some of the more important items of his new program through the American media in advance of its official presentation, he and his advisors could gauge how it would be received by both the Chamber of Deputies and the public. Everything for the next few weeks would be critical. Nothing could be left to chance. If the opposition’s reaction to the information he would leak during the interview was deemed adverse, he could always blame it on misquotes or poor understanding on the part of the American journalist. If the reaction was favorable, he would leave the speech and program intact.

For a moment, President Montalvo paused and allowed himself to think about the interview, now only six hours off. Even though it would be crucial, and he would have to exercise great care in what he said and how he presented himself, he was looking forward to it. The thought of being interviewed by an American woman of Jan Fields’s stature and beauty aroused him.

By reputation, he knew that she was as bold as she was beautiful, beguiling, and manipulative, and captivating to the point of being an enchantress. A sudden twitch and pain in his groin broke President Montalvo’s train of thought. He shifted in his seat so as to allow his reaction the additional room it demanded. As he did so, President Montalvo sheepishly looked about the cabin to see if anyone was watching.

Had someone noticed, how could he possibly account for getting an erection while reading one of his own speeches?

President Montalvo was pondering this rather unpresidential question when the first engine lost power and died. The cockpit crew, lulled into inattentiveness by the late hour and monotony, stared at the red warning light for a moment, refusing to believe they had a problem. The copilot looked out the window to see if there was a fire in the engine, but saw nothing. The pilot began to struggle with the aircraft, compensating for the loss of the engine while attempting to restart it. The flight engineer hit the fasten seat belt sign and paged the flight attendant, to warn her, and in turn the president, of the problem.

In the passenger cabin the first sign of a problem was a change in the pitch of the engine followed by a series of jerky maneuvers. President Montalvo looked up toward the front of the aircraft, waiting for someone to tell him what was wrong. His aide, who had been asleep, woke with a start and looked about for a moment before getting up to go forward and investigate the nature of the problem. Immediately behind him was the chief of security. Both men were halfway to the crew cabin when the door swung open and the flight attendant, in a near panic, came running out, headed for the president. She was about to explain the problem to the president’s aide when the second engine cut out, sending the aircraft into a steep dive and throwing everyone in the aisle sprawling.

President Montalvo grabbed the armrests of his seat and pushed himself back. He watched as those who were not strapped into their seats were hurled forward into the seat backs before them or into the aisles. The plane jerked from side to side as the pilot struggled to gain some degree of control. He failed, however. Without power there was nothing he could do to lessen the angle or speed of descent. In a matter of seconds the plane was almost on its nose and slowly spinning to the right.

Everything not secured, including people, the president’s speech, pillows, blankets, and suit jackets went crashing past President Montalvo into a great tumbled heap at.the rear of the cabin. The screams of fear and panic mixed with the cries and moans of the injured. President Montalvo braced himself with his feet on the seat back to his front in order to keep from being wrenched from his seat and into the heap at the rear of the cabin.

The descent seemed to take an eternity. Without having to be told, President Montalvo understood his fate. He knew he was going to die. In his mind, there was no panic, no desire to know why the plane was going down. There was only regret, regret that he would die a failure. The image of him riding into Mexico (Tity on a great white horse to save it and its people would go up in a great ball of fire, just like the aircraft.

The only witnesses to the crash of the aircraft into the side of a mountain in the Sierra Madre Oriental were two F-5 fighters that had been trailing the president’s plane at a discreet distance. The pilots of the F-5S watched the president’s aircraft collapse upon itself, its wings pitching forward as the sudden impact ripped them from the fuselage and spread fuel over the entire area. The fuel and its fumes ignited and exploded, enveloping the aircraft in a ball of fire. President Montalvo, key members of the cabinet, his personal staff, and the air crew were dead. The contaminated fuel that had caused their death incinerated their bodies beyond recognition and wiped away all traces of Sabotage.

Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills.

—Shakespeare, Hamlet, ii, 2

Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico

1045 hours, 29 June

Despite the hour of the day, there was little traffic along the Avenue Republica de Brasil, which pleased Corporal Jose” Fares, Guajardo’s driver. The events of the morning, the wild rumors, and the somber, almost dark mood of the colonel made Fares uncomfortable. Guajardo, slouched in the backseat of the sedan, had said nothing since getting into the sedan. In his rearview mirror Fares watched the colonel sit motionless, as if in a trance, staring vacantly out the window at the near-deserted streets. Though no one told him as much, Fares understood that the tall colonel in the backseat was one of the members of the coup that had swept Carlos Montalvo and the
PRI
away in a matter of hours and was now, no doubt, seizing control of Mexico. The very thought of being so close to a person with such power was somewhat frightening. Without realizing it, Fares drove the car with great care, acting as if he were carrying a bomb, rather than a colonel.

Guajardo did not notice the empty streets or the manner in which the corporal drove the sedan. Even when they reached the zocalo, or main square of the city, he paid scant attention to the gray stone and marble facade of the Catedral Metropolitana or any of the massive buildings that ringed the zocalo. Even in the best of times, Mexico City had little that excited Guajardo. The events of the last twenty-four hours, weighing heavy on his tired mind, did nothing to change how Colonel Guajardo felt about the capital. A native of Chihuahua, Guajardo viewed Mexico City and the government that ruled the country from it with suspicion. Like his forefathers, he had been raised to be self-reliant and an individual, traits that were as necessary for survival in the political world of modern Mexico as they were in the harsh and remote northern state.

Mechanically, when the car stopped, Guajardo opened the door and was out of the sedan before Corporal Fares had a chance to get out and open it for him. Without a word, Guajardo walked away from Fares, passed two guards at the South Gate of the Palacio Nacional, and headed for the offices of the president. Like Corporal Fares, the guards knew instinctively who, and what, Guajardo was. Stepping back, they saluted with a crispness seldom seen in Mexico, and allowed him to pass.

As with Corporal Fares, Guajardo did not acknowledge their presence.

He walked out of the sun into the dark shadows of the Palacio Nacional, lost in his own thoughts, fears, and concerns. For now he was moving into the unfamiliar halls from which political power emanated, a world that he was not trained to deal with. Behind his every thought, self-doubt hovered like a buzzard, leaving him to wonder if the skills his grandfather and father had passed on to him would see him through the revolution he and his co-conspirators had embarked upon.

Through the corridors, courtyards, and halls of the palace, Guajardo trudged, past colorful murals and paintings that recorded Mexico’s history.

Only briefly, as he passed a mural depicting the heroes of the last Mexican Revolution, did Guajardo pause. For a second, his eyes glanced from the face of one hero of the Revolution to another, looking into their eyes in the hope that they could give him the answers and inspiration that he himself could not find.

But they could not. The colorful images, larger than life but lifeless, betrayed no secrets or answers. They only looked down on Guajardo, a there mortal, returning his stare. There was no strength or knowledge to be drawn from the images on the wall. Disappointed, Guajardo let out a slight sigh as he wondered if the real men who had inspired the images on the mural had felt the self-doubt, exhaustion, and fear that he was feeling then. They all had been, he told himself, humans themselves. It was their actions that mattered. Standing there, Guajardo wondered if that was their message. Perhaps what the mural really said was, “Look at us! We were there mortals. We are here because we overcame the limits of our bodies and the fears in our minds to do what was necessary.’’ Drawing in a deep breath, Guajardo scanned the mural once more, nodding his head as he did so. Yes, they were only men, he thought, no better than he. With the dark cloud of self-doubt tempered by that thought, Guajardo turned and proceeded down the corridor with a determined stride.

Entering the outer office of the president’s suite, Guajardo casually glanced about as he continued on, without breaking stride, to the closed doors of the president’s office. The outer office was crammed with military officers, senior police officials, and government civilians. Some were engaged in heated discussions, others in hushed conversations. A few sat alone, lost in thought. It was easy to tell, by the expressions they wore, who believed they were on the “inside” and who didn’t know and were waiting to find out. On this day, the first day of the New Revolution, the faces of the outsiders betrayed their feelings. By far, concern, fear, panic, and gloom were dominant.

Guajardo, along with twelve other Army and Air Force colonels, were the only true insiders. Those filling the outer office who did not know this by prior knowledge soon understood by the manner in which Guajardo crossed the room. Guajardo wore a cold expression on his face as he moved through the crowd. His gait, his posture, his carriage were not those of an arrogant or pompous man. Instead, Guajardo emitted an air of confidence and power that could only be described as a commanding presence, a presence that was as much psychic as it was physical. Everyone responded to his presence without a word being spoken or a cue given. Like a bow wave, the crowd parted to allow him to pass.

Though Guajardo knew who each person was, he didn’t acknowledge their presence, for none of them were part of the Council of 13. On the other hand, the officers and civilian officials filling the room paused in midsentence or momentarily emerged from their lonely dark thoughts when Guajardo passed by them. Most acknowledged him with a slight bow of the head. Two officers made motions, which he ignored, in an effort to catch Guajardo’s attention. One civilian, alone in the corner, shaken from his thoughts by Guajardo’s passing shadow, looked up at Guajardo and grimaced as if he had just seen his own hangman. Regardless, all kept their eyes on him as they stepped aside, allowing Guajardo to glide by.